Three's a crowd here... Tribute to Samson

You know they say that bad things always come in threes? Well, here that statement qualifies in the "three's a crowd" category. Since school started this year, My family has been to 3 funerals - my step-mom's, and Hubby's cousin and grandfather. The first 2 hit hard and all funerals were in the first semester of school. This semester the deaths seem to be confined to animals, but we have now had 2 important animals die. I wrote about our goats already (and have not had a chance to get pics yet). We've taken care of that.

First some background. Samson was MY dog. I have never before owned a dog that was mine. When one of our other dogs had died, my hubby got him for our family for Mother's Day 2 years ago. We rescued him from a shelter on his last day there. He was big, goofy, and sometimes annoying or stupid. His big head would get onto the counter after our leftovers. His big tail would knock drinks off side tables or whack in rhythm against the wall when he was waiting for dinner or happy. He enjoyed many nights outside (we usually keep our pups inside) due to his ignoring our calls or his love for skunks. I loved him. I took him with me whenever I went out of time.

His undoing (and the stupid in him) was that he LOVED to chase cars. I could not convince him to stop and he would ignore us when we called him back. When a car or truck drove by, his job was to make sure he ran truck off. He would run the entire distance of our property (about a half mile) to run off an intruder. He was proud that he scared off those crazy noisy beasts.

Last night, I had taken Samson outside with me to feed my horse and got distracted. I went back inside and then remembered that he was outside. I called him but he didn't come so I assumed that he was running in the pasture. I figured that he would be back soon and would hit the door to let him in. I didn't even hear the truck come down the road. It hit him on his head and there was nothing we could do for him. Within minutes, he was having a very hard time breathing and his right side of his head was swollen. By the time my husband had him in the back of the truck and toward the pasture, he had almost stopped breathing. Hubby had to take care of him and was hurting by the fact that his daughter and wife just lost their dog.

The worst part was that my daughter was the one to find him. She was heading out to feed her goats and he was right in front of the garage. This is the second dog we found like this.


I CAN'T WAIT to find a place that is far enough from roads that I can let my dogs run the property without worrying about cars hitting them. I hate having 38 acres and having to tie or fence my dogs up close to the house.

Hopefully this is the last post like this, and I am sorry to poor out my pity party all over the internet, but this is why I have this post. I want to chronicle the adventures, good and bad, of our life on a ranch. Maybe through this, I, and others, will be able to learn what not to do and what is good.

Thanks for reading.